Over the years online marketing has grown in importance in the airline industry. This media space offers airlines numerous marketing tools, one of the most recent being social media. Social media allows airlines to interact directly with customers via various Internet platforms, and monitor customer opinions and evaluations of services. This exploratory paper studies airlines’ use of social media on Facebook and Twitter for a defined period of time. The paper analyses the content of social media posted by airlines and provides a categorization of the content according to the promotional marketing mix. A netnographic method has been adopted for the examination of these social media platforms. Study findings show that there is poor strategic perspective and a lack of continuity in the use of social media. Results may aid marketing departments in their marketing and social media communication strategies, while at the same time complementing current marketing research.

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Tourism is often linked to ideas of escapism and release from everyday duties and obligations.
Modern societies are characterized by highly complex systems of social and cultural control, and
citizens of these societies find forms of liberation in travel (Jafari 1987). Tourism destinations act as
magnetic spaces of leisure and relaxation that can be visualized as the realm of ‘touristhood’– a
theatrical arena in which individuals adopt different masks and conduct themselves according to
expectations and norms that differ from those that rule their everyday lives. The consumption and
enjoyment of alcoholic drinks constitutes a relevant element of the scenery of touristhood. In
touristic spaces the beer product is socially transformed and constructed; tourists enact beer tourism
through drinking practices and rituals performed at the destination.
Alcohol, and in this case beer consumption, is constitutive of socio-cultural traditions in many
national cultures (such as those in Northern Europe). National and local beer cultures are however
being transformed and re-shaped in tourism destinations. This study examines the interrelation of
beer cultures, more specifically German beer culture, and tourism. It examines how beer culture,
combined with touristhood, produces extreme and novel forms of consumption transforming both
tourism practices and the world of beer.

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A development in Information and Communication Technologies promising
to have a large impact on tourism is the phenomenon known as the Web 2.0. A key to
this development is the encouraging of interactivity due to User Generated Content
(UGC). This paper focuses on a specific type of UGC: Tourist Created Content (TCC).
Based on an exploratory examination of the Web and an extensive analysis of the
content, the study systematizes the knowledge about TCC, presents a classification
system and provides an overview of its characteristics. The paper shows the processes
that allow the tourist to digitalize content and reveals how TCC relates to the cultures of
the Internet and shapes the tourism experience.

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Tourists have happily embraced the possibilities of interactivity and publication provided by social
media and Web 2.0. The last decade has seen a massive increase of digital content generated by tourists
online. This paper examines the digitalization of tourists’ heritage experience, analyses the impact of
social media and user generated content in the consumption of heritage sites, and discusses new forms
of technologically mediated authenticity in tourism. Netnography and a constructive approach have
been adopted for the examination of online communities and social networks. There are different
types of tourist generated content online. This study focuses on the review genre and examines a
purposive sample of data collected from Tripadvisor which, with over 30 million contributions, is the
largest online community focusing on tourism and travel. Through a systematic analysis of tourists’
narratives and socio-technical structures, this study assesses how technologies influence tourists’
heritage experience. The research findings provide insights into the role that tourists’ online reviews
play as mediators of the tourism experience and illustrate the features of an emerging virtual tourism
culture.